Many different forms of collating arrangements are known in the art and one of the chief drawbacks of those existing arrangements is realized with the degree of labour intensity. Generally speaking, several personnel are involved in handling the articles to eventually be packaged and this often leads to difficulties in terms of damaged goods as well as complications with respect to health standards. Further limitations revolve around the fact that the additional personnel add labour costs to the overall process.
One of the references which is representative of the arrangements in this art is U.S. Pat. No. 5,201,398, issued Apr. 13, 1993 to Clugston for an apparatus designed for unscrambling sealed containers. In the apparatus, the Clugston device incorporates a water tank filled with water and containers to be unscrambled are passed in a scrambled manner into the water container and eventually lowered into the intake of the vessel. It is indicated in the specification that the containers are passed from the conveyor and distribution and movement of the containers occurs on an unscrambler bed. Distribution and movement is facilitated by pressurized fluid supplied by nozzles 44. The pressurized gas or fluid urges the containers onto slide plates 14, which are downwardly inclined relative to the discharge point of the unscrambler bed. The articles are then slidably transported to a further stage referred to as a lane transition section. The Clugston reference, although teaching a useful apparatus, incorporates fairly involved procedure for transporting the articles. It is submitted that this arrangement is useful only in situations where the articles are hermetically sealed. This would have little use, if any, to collate foodstuffs which are assembled into an array and packaged at a downstream operation.
A further example of generally related art in this field is set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 3,608,271, issued Sep. 28, 1971, to Pilat. The arrangement taught in this patent is directed to a coin wrapping machine, which incorporates a ramp for transportation of the coins. The Pilat reference, although having the ramp transportation system, would not be an effective arrangement to transport foodstuffs in view of the fact that it has been specifically designed for transportation of small articles, in this case, coins.
Other references of general relevance to the subject matter set forth herein, include U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,186,652, 2,250,427, 4,105,108, and 5,123,516.
It would be desirable if there were a method for collating loose articles into an orderly array which is significantly less labour intensive and which reduces the contact between the product and the personnel packaging the product.
The present invention is directed to solving the difficulties as set forth herein.